IBM uses its 'SmartCamp' to find the best B2B startups

The most crucial aspect of participating in programs like GEP though, and becoming SmartCamp champs, is validation and endorsement from a tech giant like IBM.Delshad Irani | ET Bureau | August 03, 2016, 16:04 IST

A kind of Shark Tank for early-stage startups from across the world, IBM's SmartCamp is part of its Global Entrepreneur Program (GEP). It is a mentorship opportunity, a rigorous bootcamp, and networking session, complete with accelerators, venture capitalists, partners and enterprises. There's fierce competition with hackathons between startups from Rio to Mumbai. The point of SmartCamp is to find the best B2B startups and give the companies access to IBM's tools and innovations lab, cloud credits up to $120,000, and guidance and mentorship from Big Blue's executive team. "We give startups a platform to develop their offering to solve enterprise problems. We give them visibility so they can get funding to grow businesses," says Vivek Malhotra, cloud leader, IBM India and South Asia. What's also interesting is the fact that a fair number of the startups are from non-metro Indian cities who, as a part of SmartCamp, end up presenting their products to over 60 enterprise chief information officers.

Perhaps the most crucial aspect of participating in programs like GEP though, and becoming SmartCamp champs, is validation and endorsement from a tech giant like IBM. Aruna Schwarz, CEO and co-founder of Stelae Technologies (2014 - APAC winners and one of the 9 global finalists) says; "Consequently it becomes a much easier ride with our partners and customers. Having IBM back us really built up the credibility of the brand. Another consequence is we raised a pre-series A round funding last year with a few small funds." Tech validation from IBM was an enormous value add in the funding round for Stelae, a pure play enterprise software company. (The 2015 SmartCamp winner, Sirion Labs co-founded by Ajay Agarwal got $12 million in funding post their participation in IBM's GEP.)

In the big data space, Stelae's software product Khemeia takes unstructured content, only documents in any format, and creates structured searchable output. It unlocks content and enables it to be analysed, indexed and searched. The product, Schwarz tells us, was built with customers and very little investment. Stelae has generated $1.8 million of customer revenue. The company has raised $700,000 in external funding till date. Its customers include Rolls Royce Aerospace (UK), submarine manufacturer DCNS in France, Deutsche Bank, again in the UK, and a large defence customer in India. Schwarz says, through GEP Stelae and she in personal capacity are now deeply locked into the IBM ecosystem. And the tech behemoth also began promoting Stelae's product to its customers. Otherwise, says Schwarz, "Unless you are an IBM, SAP or Oracle you never get a foot in the door of huge corporate customers."